Rain Launches Agentic Payments Alliance With 26 Founding Members Including Visa and Mastercard
Key Takeaways
- •Rain launched the Agentic Payments Alliance on August 19, 2026, with 26 founding members drawn from across the payments and cryptocurrency industries.
- •Founding members include Visa, Mastercard, Circle, Solana, and Uniswap, combining expertise from traditional finance with blockchain, stablecoin, and decentralized finance companies.
- •Agentic payments refer to transactions initiated and executed by autonomous AI software agents on behalf of users or businesses, typically using programmable rails such as stablecoins and smart contracts.
- •Circle's participation follows the GENIUS Act, signed into U.S. law in July 2025, which established the first federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins.
- •The alliance builds on prior agentic commerce initiatives, including Mastercard's Agent Pay and Visa's Intelligent Commerce framework announced in April 2025 and the Agent Payments Protocol released by PayPal, Google, and Cisco in late 2025.
Rain, a payments infrastructure company known for its stablecoin-based card issuing and settlement technology, has launched the Agentic Payments Alliance, a new initiative announced on August 19, 2026 that brings together 26 founding members from across the payments and cryptocurrency industries — including Visa, Mastercard, Circle, Solana, and Uniswap — to advance the future of digital and programmable payments.
The alliance combines participants from both traditional finance and the blockchain industry, a structure that reflects growing collaboration between established payment networks and crypto-native companies. By uniting a broad range of organizations, the initiative aims to support innovation in payment infrastructure and emerging financial technologies. The launch also highlights increasing industry interest in building payment systems designed for automated and intelligent digital transactions. In industry terms, "agentic payments" refers to transactions initiated and executed by autonomous AI software agents acting on behalf of users or businesses, typically over programmable rails such as stablecoins and smart contracts.
Major Industry Players Join the Initiative
Among the alliance's founding members are global payment giants Visa and Mastercard, alongside leading blockchain and crypto companies including Circle — the issuer of the USDC stablecoin — Solana, and Uniswap. Additional founding members span various sectors of the digital asset ecosystem, reinforcing the alliance's broad industry support.
The diverse membership brings together expertise in card payments, stablecoins, blockchain infrastructure, and decentralized finance. The collaboration is expected to encourage interoperability and accelerate the development of next-generation payment solutions. Circle's involvement also comes after the GENIUS Act, signed into U.S. law in July 2025, established the first federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins.
LATEST: Rain has launched the Agentic Payments Alliance with 26 founding members, including Visa, Mastercard, Circle, Solana and Uniswap. pic.twitter.com/gjVD38JGns
A Step Toward Next-Generation Payments
The Agentic Payments Alliance reflects the growing convergence of traditional finance and blockchain technology. The initiative follows a broader industry push into agentic commerce: in April 2025, Mastercard unveiled Agent Pay for AI-driven transactions and Visa introduced its Intelligent Commerce framework, while companies including PayPal, Google, and Cisco released the Agent Payments Protocol in late 2025 to standardize how AI agents pay and get paid. As programmable payments and digital assets continue gaining adoption, partnerships between payment networks and crypto companies are becoming increasingly important. Industry participants will be watching how the alliance develops new standards, infrastructure, and use cases that could shape the future of global digital payments — and how its work relates to the agentic payment protocols already in the market.
